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posted by CoolHand on Wednesday April 29 2015, @04:59AM   Printer-friendly
from the sorry-wrong-operation-done dept.

In 2001, a doctor in New York completed what may seem like a routine surgery to remove a patient’s gallbladder. But in fact that procedure wasn’t routine at all, because the patient was in France. That was the first successful long-distance robotic surgery, or telesurgery, ever performed, and since then the field has taken off. Though robotic surgery is not yet the industry standard, sales of medical robots are increasing by 20 percent each year, and by 2025 the Department of Defense wants to have deployable Trauma Pods ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4wjAlprgBc ) that could allow surgeons to operate on soldiers from hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Though proponents of telesurgery have thoroughly discussed its benefits (there's no delay due to travel time, for example, and surgery could be possible in remote locations like deep underwater or in outer space) there hasn’t been much exploration of its weaknesses. Researchers from the University of Washington decided to put the telesurgery technology to the test to see if they are susceptible to cyber attacks. According their study, the security of surgical robots leaves much to be desired. ( http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.04339 )

http://www.popsci.com/robots-used-surgery-can-be-easily-hacked

 
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  • (Score: 2) by sigma on Wednesday April 29 2015, @05:54AM

    by sigma (1225) on Wednesday April 29 2015, @05:54AM (#176486)

    We like to think that surgical procedures are close to a pinnacle of modern marvels, but really it's still quite brutal and often extremely damaging to the patient. There's no doubt that surgery is essential for some people, but our goal should be to outgrow the need for it.

    Even these and more advanced autonomous robots should be seen as an interim stepping stone to a better way.

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